A message from the Civil Society cancelled the visit of the Pro-Coup Mufti Allam to UK

The Right Rev and Right Hon. Lord Carey of Clifton,

The House of Lords

Westminster

SW1A 0PW

Dear Lord Carey,

We the undersigned are deeply troubled that as a former Archbishop of Canterbury you will be sharing a platform with the Mufti of Egypt, Shawki Ibrahim Allam, at a meeting organised by UKIP in Westminster on youth radicalisation. As British Muslims, we neither recognise this individual as a “leading religious figure” nor as a representative of Islam or Islamic values.

The well documented brutal massacres of unarmed protesters following the military coup in Egypt in July 2013, and the imprisonment of dissidents along with the well documented cases of torture, rape and sexual violence against children by the military were not condemned by Sheikh Allam who represents the great and respected institution of Al-Azhar whose leaders today condone these actions and the imprisonment of fellow clerics and students of Al-Azhar.

Indeed, his predecessor, Sheikh Ali Gomaa told an audience of the Egyptian military and police leadership, referring to pro democracy protestors: “shoot them in the heart ... Blessed are those who kill them, and those who are killed by them . . . We must cleanse our Egypt from these riffraff.” This left thousands dead, maimed and injured, in what Human Rights Watch labelled as, “the worst massacre in modern history”.

Mufti Allam himself is on record stating that “shedding the blood of others is considered permissible if done with the permission of the ruler and is considered to be legal according to Sharia law.” He signed the death warrants of  some of the 1,243 Egyptians dissidents who were condemned to the gallows in a trial that collectively lasted barely a few hours.

Mufti Allam is a man in the tradition of Ludwig Muller the infamous Riechsbishop or Cesare Orsenigo, the equally infamous papal nuncio to Berlin during the Nazi era, and as such we strongly condemn and reject the decision for such an individual to be allowed to enter and speak at a public event in the UK.

British Muslim Initiative

Islamic Forum of Europe

IslamExpo

Enough Coalition Against Islamophobia

Finsbury Park Mosque

Muslim Association of Britain

Muslim Welfare House

Muslim Students House